Read Online Ladybird by Grace Livingston Hill - Free Book Online

portion of corn bread and a few small bites of the salt meat. To her starved appetite, it tasted like the most savory meal. Then she drank a cup of water, corked the bottle carefully, tied up her kit, and stood up.
    The river was off at her left now, a few yards away, for the ground where she was seemed to be an easier path for her feet than close by the riverbank. The sun had turned the river into a broad band of gold, and the west was bright with its horizontal rays, blending sky and earth at the horizon into a golden haze as if an eternal city were just beyond that point. With her binoculars, Fraley swept the land behind her and to either side and came at last to the view straight ahead, catching her breath at the beauty of the day that was departing, the exquisite tinting of the foliage and sky and clouds, rejoicing that there was not even a sign of cattle anywhere around, save a few scattered ones miles away behind her.
    Then suddenly, as she looked, fear crept into her body like a great hand that gripped her as in a vise, for, out from the golden distance, along the ridge that led from as far as she could see, back along the line of the opposite mountain and on toward the cabin she had left, there moved a little black dot!
    At first she thought it must be a speck on the glass, and she carefully breathed upon it and polished it with her sleeve. But, no, when she looked again the dot, growing rapidly larger, was moving on toward her. As she watched it, scarcely daring to breathe, it gradually became three moving dots, one lighter than the rest and still coming on over that ridge of the opposite mountain.
    She tried to tell herself that she was nervous, excited, seeing things that this was some sort of mirage. Her mother had told her of mirages on the desert. But this was not the desert.
    Larger and larger the dots grew, nearer and nearer they came, racing along the ridge. They were so near now that through the binoculars she could distinctly see that they were horses bearing riders. A conviction grew upon her that it was some of the men from the cabin out on a search party after her, and her knees grew so weak they shook. She dropped to the earth suddenly as if she had been shot, as this fear grew to a certainty, and keeping a sharp lookout with lowered head, she crept on hands and knees toward a clump of bushes down by the riverbank. Oh, if she had stayed over there instead of daring to take the more open ground! Perhaps they had already sighted her. Yet, unless they were carrying binoculars, too, they might not have seen her. Brand had binoculars, she knew. But was it Brand or some of the others? Or was it only some passing cowboys who knew nothing at all about her?
    When she reached the screen of the bushes she crept close, and thus in ambush trained her binoculars once more on the riders.
    They were almost opposite her range now, and she could see them plainly, although they must be a long distance away. The air was clear and still, and she could hear them shout to one another, though she could not hear what they said, and once she thought she heard a curse flung into the golden evening. But as they came opposite, she saw distinctly that two horses were dark and one was white, and the white one was lame in his left hind foot.
    Like little silhouettes they moved across the opposite ridge of mountain. Now she was sure, though she could not see the men’s faces, that the one on the forward dark horse was Pete; the other dark one would be Shorty, they always went together; and the white horse was Pierce Boyden’s, the man she hated and dreaded most of all except Brand Carter.
    As she watched them through the screen of the bushes, they suddenly drew rein and stood together, pointing off in her direction, as if consulting about their route. Then they turned their course and came down from the ridge of the mountain, winding like tiny puppets into the dark pathways of the mountainside. There was a patch of trees that